I don’t think that many people understand that you can find the photo on Google maps. I think people are more apt to click on the link than to surmise that they can see the photo on Google. Besides, three quarters of the country hasn’t been photographed yet. You would have to first go on Google, ascertain that the location has been photographed, and then determine that the building in the photo is the theater. Since many of the shots have the former theater off center, or not visible at all, I have done the work of following the arrows and figuring out which building is the theater. In cases where I can’t identify the former building, I don’t bother to post a photo.

Thanks, Ed Blank. I grew up in Avalon and recall as a child standing in line at the “Bellevue”. On a Sat. morning the kids would be lined up to the corner and down around the corner, waiting for the doors to open at 11:00am to see 21 color cartoons, a newsreel or 1 or 2 shorts then double feature monster movies or a western. We would leave the theater sometime after 5:00pm (what a baby sitter) and it only cost a quarter. My mother worked there at the ticket booth in the late 40’s. I remember the theater had beautiful lighting sconces. The ceiling was painted with a sky and clouds and when the main lights were dimmed there where small lighted stars over the entire ceiling

I only got to see a movie at this theater once. I went on a date with Nancey Epperson to see “A Brief Vacation,” an Italian film directed by Vittorio de Sica, starring Florinda Bolkan. It was rare that sub-titled foreign language films played in neighborhoods like this one as a second-run.

I remember seeing Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty there when I was a toddler – perhaps the first movie I ever saw in a theater. Thereafter fond memories of most of the Disney films from the 1960s – Absent Minded Professor, etc., and also some Hammer horror flicks.

I also remember those lighting sconces on the walls. They had the feel of a medieval castle.